The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1914

by Margot C. Finn

• ISBN13: 9780521823425
• ISBN10: 0521823420
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-09-15
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Using a wide range of printed sources and paying particular attention to distinctions of gender and class, Margot Finn examines English consumer culture from three interlocking perspectives. Finn considers representations of debt in novels, diaries and autobiographical memoirs; the transformation of imprisonment for debt; and the use of small claims courts to mediate disputes between debtors and creditors. This major study of personal debt from 1740 to 1914 will appeal to social, legal and cultural historians, literary scholars and readers interested in the history of consumer culture.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I. Debt and Credit in English Memory and Imagination: 1. Fictions of debt and credit, 1740-1914

2. Debt and credit in diaries and autobiographies

Part II. Imprisonment for Debt and the Economic Individual: 3. 'Mansions of Misery': The unreformed debtors' prison

4. Discipline or abolish? Reforming imprisonment for debt

Part III. Petty Debts and the Modernisation of English Law: 5. 'A Kind of Parliamentary Magic': eighteenth-century courts of conscience

6. From courts of conscience to county courts: small claims litigation in the nineteenth century

7. Market moralities: tradesmen, credit and the courts in Victorian and Edwardian England

Conclusion.